Return to Transcripts main page

At This Hour

Dark, Dangerous Conditions Halt Search; Indonesia Confirms Nine Bodies Recovered; USS Fort Worth May Join Search; Searchers Race Against Time and Weather; How Experts Get Clues From Wreckage; Jeb Bush Cuts Commercial Ties

Aired January 01, 2015 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Impossibly slow. Newly-leaked data reportedly shows AirAsia 8501 may have slowed down to the speed of a car before dropping out of the sky. What could this tell us about the plane's final moments?

Dramatic footage showing North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un firmly in command, so is this his response to "The Interview" that cause so much controversy.

And then dramatic political moves overnight. While you were sleeping off 2014, Jeb Bush took a serious step towards 2016.

Those stories and much more ahead @THISHOUR. Hello, everyone, I'm John Berman. Michaela Pereira is off today.

New developments this morning in the search for victims and wreckage of Flight 8501. A female passenger has become the first victim of the crash to be identified and returned to her family. She was laid to rest a short time ago.

Indonesian officials confirm that nine of the 162 people who were on that flight have been recovered so far -- nine.

Also luggage, pieces of stairs and other metal scraps were collected today floating in the Java Sea, but the horrible weather and rough seas have made these efforts extremely difficult.

Right now the search is suspended because of the dark and dangerous conditions. And officials warn that the pinger locaters on those critical black boxes only have 25 days of battery power left.

We're covering this story from every angle. Andrew Stevens is at the new crisis center for family members in Surabaya and Indonesia.

Andrew, what are you hearing today about the search. Any update on the shadow of an object that they thought they saw in the water?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This looks like it holds the key to the mystery of where the main fuselage is now on the bottom of the ocean and what actually happened in the lead up to how it got there. But, John, the short answer is no, there was no new information. A few hours ago there was a tweet from Tony Fernandes, who is the CEO of AirAsia, and just let me read it to you. He said, "I'm hoping the information is correct and the aircraft has been found."

Now he tweeted this out about six or seven hours ago and since then nothing. And repeated checks of the head of search and rescue saying we still don't know where that wreckage is. They're still trying to relocate it. That's the frustrating part.

Obviously the reason for this frustration is it's so difficult to operate in that area at the moment. It's almost as if the search crews now, John, are having to work around the weather when there's a clear patch because there's continuous bands going through.

When there's a clear patch, they'll do what they can. The winds then whip up again, the rain comes through, visibility drops, wave action picks up, and they sort of just have to ride it out.

They do have vessels there with the acoustic listening devices. They've only -- from what we've understand, they've only got one in the water at the moment, so painfully, painfully slow.

They say this could continue to Sunday. It's now Thursday night. But until Sunday before they start getting better conditions.

BERMAN: Very, very difficult to work in these conditions, Andrew.

What about the identification process on the bodies? One identified so far.

STEVENS: Yeah. Just to give you an idea of the progress on IDing the victims as they come in, there's now been one positive id, and that is the flight attendant. And she was actually buried in a simple ceremony a few hours ago just with her family and friends in attendance at a cemetery close to her house.

But she was one of two first bodies to come to Surabaya for identification more than 24 hours ago. We're told she actually had her i.d. card on the clothes she was wearing at the time. She had a piece of jewelry with her name on it. So it would seem like it would be fairly simple task in identifying her.

But they did DNA sampling, and they're doing this because they have to be so cautious about getting the correct i.d. So it is going to be a slow process even once the bodies have arrived here.

The family has been asked for photos, for records, dental records if they have them, any identifying marks, jewelry for example, and also any samples which contain DNA which they can get a match with.

So that's what they're doing behind me at this new crisis center. This is a police hospital which has now been turned over as the disaster identification victim center.

Going to take a long time as they come in. And it's going to take days before we get to start seeing more and more bodies coming in here.

BERMAN: Very difficult for those families, but new accommodations for them right there behind you.

Andrew Stevens for us in Surabaya, thank you so much. We're going to talk to you again later this hour.

The U.S. may be sending another ship to help in the search. The USS Fort Worth is on standby to deploy to the search area if required. This ship, the Fort Worth, has both a dive team and side-scan sonar which could be essential to the underwater search.

Want to bring in our senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns. Joe, how can this new vessel if it gets there to the scene, if it's even asked to go, how will the USS Fort Worth help?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: John, the USS Fort Worth is the second ship available to be deployed to the region to assist in the search.

It's a U.S. combat ship that had originally sent to Singapore for a 16-month deployment, now apparently being repurposed, if necessary, for the search-and-recovery mission. Fort Worth is one of the newest vessels, essentially on its first mission. Its side-scan sonar should be useful for starters in the search.

USS Sampson, a guided missile destroyer, is also out there available. The U.S. has said it would send in aircraft, a P-8 Poseidon aircraft with a very interesting and unique capability. It can do long-range maritime reconnaissance.

We don't know precisely how they plan to use it, but it can be the controller of a fleet of drones, for example, as they look at very specific areas of the ocean.

It's also a war fighting plane, of course. But in this mission, possible that the plane's underwater detection capabilities could be called into play, including dropping sonobuoys to try to locate debris.

And as we already know two dive teams are also being offered to help out in the search, John.

BERMAN: I was speaking to Admiral Kirby from the Pentagon just the other day, and he was essentially saying they're on standby to do whatever the Indonesians ask as soon as they ask for it. They're just waiting to be asked in some cases.

Once the wreckage, all of it, is located, especially the main fuselage, a big, big chunk, it could be, how do you think they would approach getting that out of the water?

JOHNS: First they have to map all the pieces. That, of course, could be an enormous job, just finding out where all the pieces of the plane might be scattered under water. After that, it's sort of lifting one piece out by crane and with the help of divers, and they try to get it all assembled at least until they find the voice recorders, and that might help them know a little bit more about what happened here.

And then they would have the opportunity to take select pieces out as they try to reconstruct the plane to show exactly what happened. It's very complex process. And as you know, using divers at that depth, it can take quite a while because they have to use decompression chambers because those divers can only stay down for so long.

BERMAN: Joe Johns, thanks so much.

One other factor that's complicating all this of course is the weather, extremely heavy seas right now. Let's get a sense of how that is affecting things and how things might change in the coming hours.

Let's go to Chad Myers at the CNN Weather Center. Chad, right now the search is suspended. It's night time. What are the conditions like for the divers?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, we have waves about 14 feet. And for even people looking over the deck, just looking out there, all you're seeing is big waves and then the wind at 20 or 30 miles per hour, so big white caps, so looking for white pieces of an airplane with white caps on top of the waves, not a pretty sight.

Divers can get down in this weather, though. I've been diving with 13 feet above me. Once you get in the water you don't feel that 13-foot wave above you. It's nice and calm down there. So that's going to be helpful.

But the water gets turbid when you start to move stuff around like this. When you start to blow 13-foot waves all over the shore, you start to lose visibility. You start lose the depth of your visibility, maybe only five or eight feet.

Kind of a rough day today, we had showers and thunderstorms most of the after none and now calming down as it always does at night. You want it to go the other way. But here in this part of the world, right now at least it's not doing that. It gets nice at night, and it gets ugly during the day. We're expecting that again for the next few days.

I don't think we get better until Sunday. And better is still only going to be a relative term. It isn't going to get flat. We're not going to see a glassy sea out there because we're in monsoon season.

We're in the time now when the ITCZ, the intertropical convergence zone, is right over this area. There will be storms every day. You just have to work your way in between them

And there we go, all the way through Saturday. For the next 48 hours, you line it up, that's about three inches of rainfall. Rainfall doesn't seem like a big deal over the ocean, and it's not. But if it's raining, there are clouds. If those clouds are thick enough, they're low enough, you can't see anything from an airplane, so all of a sudden, you're losing visibility from above as well.

We did have a tropical storm up there in the Philippines, Jangmi. There it is right there. That could drop a little bit of moisture down into the area, but I'm not expecting anything here.

But you can just look at the cloud cover, John. Look what it looks like here. That's is clouds all the way from India all the way back over toward Indonesia and Micronesia, all these areas here. This is right in the middle of where these storms are supposed to be this time of year.

BERMAN: And it could be until Sunday until they get enough of a clearing to get the work under way again. Chad Myers, thanks so much for being with us.

Ahead for us @THISHOUR, piecing together the clues, what can we learn from the engine flaps, from the rudders, from the debris field?

On the subject of clues, newly leaked data shows an incredibly steep incline before this flight, 8501, dropped from the sky. So does this support the theory that the plane stalled?

Also, we will answer your questions. Post them on our Facebook page or tweet us to the hash tag "8501Qs."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: @THISHOUR, search teams trying to pinpoint the location of AirAsia flight 8501 in the Java Sea, but once it is found, the next daunting task begins -- to mine that wreckage for answers. Every piece of the plane could tell an important story.

Aviation experts showed our Stephanie Elam just how this process works.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: To find out what brought down a plane --

MICHAEL BARR, AVIATION SAFETY EXPERT: You've got to bite this a small bite at a time.

ELAM: -- investigators look to the wreckage and not just the black boxes for clues.

BARR: I will never have all the parts, never. But the more parts I get, it's like a mosaic. The more bits I can put into the mosaic, the better my picture will be. The better the picture, the better I can come up with an understanding of what happened.

ELAM: But when a plane crashes into the water like AirAsia flight 8501, that task is a more difficult endeavor.

BARR: Crash on land is much easier because the parts stay where they landed. In the water you're working with currents and winds, and so the pieces won't be where they have the initial impact.

The deeper the water, the more difficult. Other accidents that happened in shallow water, they got most of the pieces back. Deep water, we have a very, very hard time doing that.

ELAM: Take for example, Malaysia Air Flight 370. The missing 777 jet is believed by many to be somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. By examining other crashes, investigators can deduce what likely happened if the massive plane did crash into the water.

ANTHONY THOMAS, DIRECTOR, USC AVIATION SAFETY AND SECURITY PROGRAM: In this case, the primary energy of this wreckage was absorbed by the right front cockpit. It has two jet engines just like the Malaysian aircraft, but, in fact, it's 10,000 pounds versus the 777 which was 600,000 pounds, 60 times larger.

ELAM (on-camera): If it broke up, that debris field on the bottom of the sea floor would be massive.

THOMAS: You're absolutely right.

ELAM: So this wing here, this is a wing that crashed into the water.

THOMAS: What's important to us here is tracing the front leading edge of this right wing. It looks like it struck some object, but, in fact, this wing hit the water, the water being a very, very hard surface when you hit it fast.

ELAM: And so if you're talking about a 777 hitting the water, it would be immensely more noticeable.

THOAMS: And that 777 would be moving at a much higher speed than this aircraft here. So therefore, the energy would be greater.

ELAM (voice-over): Yet, even with all the pieces investigators are able to put back together, if they don't recover the part of the plane that failed in flight, the cause of the crash may remain a mystery.

Stephanie Elam, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to Stephanie Elam for that. We want to talk more with retired Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christiansen; he's an aviation consultant and worked with Air Force search and rescue. Also joining us, our safety analyst and former FAA safety inspector David Soucie. He has a new book, "Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Why It Disappeared and Why It's Only a Matter of Time Before This Happens Again".

Gentlemen, in that story we just saw, an aviation expert talked about how important it is to know the plane's speed. Let's talk about an article this morning in the "Sydney Morning Herald." An Indonesian aviation analyst, claiming to use leaked information from the investigation team, says the AirAsia jet was, quote, "like a piece of metal being thrown down. It's really hard to comprehend. The way it goes down is bordering on the edge of logic." This analyst was puzzled by the extremely low ground speed he saw, saying the plane was descending at the same speed as a car on the highway. Now, CNN doesn't have this information independently right now. It's in the "Sydney Morning Herald." But, David Soucie, if it's true, if it's accurate, what does it tell you about what happened here?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Well, it's hard to say because of the fact that they said ground speed. Ground speed is just simply that, how fast you're traveling over the ground. If you have a 200 knot headwind, you'd be traveling in an airplane at 264 knots. But on the ground speed, only 64 knots. It sounds kind of confusing but you have to subtract. Everything is relative in the air. It has nothing to do with the ground. So this could tell us two things. Either there was no wind at altitude and the aircraft was so slow it couldn't maintain flight, or it could tell you there was an extremely high headwind that he was flying into which would have appeared on the ground as though it was going very slow but in the air it still feels like you're going fast enough to fly.

BERMAN: Ground speed in and of itself doesn't tell us enough. We need to still know more. Colonel, what about the incline? This article says what ha been said before, that the plane appeared to be climbing at an almost impossibly steep lift.

LT. COL. KEN CHRISTIANSEN (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE, SEARCH AND RESCUE: Well, the steep angle in which it appeared the plane could have -- another scenario from David is the plane stalled. If the plane was at altitude and then it stalled at that high deck angle, or high angle of attack, the plane would then fall. But there is some forward -- if the vector is going this way, then there is forward airspeed on the aircraft. And it would appear that it was going as fast as a car, but, in fact, it was also falling vertically at over 10,000 feet a minute.

This is much like the Air France jet when it had a high nose altitude and it fell like a leaf. It just continued to fall and that fall rate was between 10,000 and 12,000 feet per minute. And that only takes 4, 4.5 from altitude to impact the water.

BERMAN: Ken, what about the location of the debris field as we know it? More than 100 miles from the point of last radar contact. Would that concur then with this theory?

CHRISTIANSEN: It could. The pilot could have initiated a turn. And don't forget the pilot is going about eight miles a minute through the air. So when they are turning and then the wind's aloft, it was very violent weather up there, they could have also deviated from course. In two minutes, that's 16 miles. They might not have got air traffic control's OK but they're allowed to deviate without air traffic control's consent. So there could be a mixture of him turning, air traffic control not talking, and then after the incident or if there was an in-flight breakup, some of the debris field floated down in that fashion. So, yes, that's a possibility.

BERMAN: David, shifting gears here, they still don't have any pings from the black boxes. We understand from Andrew Stevens just a short time ago, Andrew told us that he did think at one point they did have one of the locaters, one of the sonar locaters in the water. They've had a hard time obviously because of the conditions. But are you surprised at this point that we haven't heard reports of any pings?

SOUCIE: Not really. Because they're really not looking for pings yet. How the process works would be the sonar identifies an object. At the point which they'd identified that object which they apparently have now but we don't have confirmation, at that point they start looking for the black boxes. The underwater locater beacons are strictly to find the black box itself. So until that search starts -- in other words, they may have found the aircraft, it's broken up into enough pieces. Once you're in that general proximate vicinity, how do you find whether the boxes were broke loose and left the area, or whether they're still attached to the aircraft. That's what the ULBs are used for.

In the case of MH370, of course, we used them for much more than that, to try to even locate it.

BERMAN: We have 25 days left on the batteries, maybe more.

SOUCIE: That's about right.

BERMAN: Any reason for undue concern or rush beyond what they're doing right now?

SOUCIE: No. In MH370 we were concerned because we had information, reliable information, that the batteries could have been stored improperly so we would have had less than 30 days. But, in this case, we don't have any evidence of that. So we would expect it to go 30 days to as much as 45 days according to the manufacturer.

BERMAN: And, Ken -- or Colonel, I want to shift to the bodies. It's a grim, gruesome subject. Nine bodies right now recovered from the water. Are you surprised at all that number hasn't been higher? And the fact it hasn't been higher, what might that tell you?

CHRISTIANSEN: The fact that it hasn't been higher can tell you a couple things. If the aircraft actually had an inflight breakup, some of the people could have remained strapped in their seats and when the airplane impacted the water, they're still in the pieces of the aircraft. So if you had an airplane and it broke in half, the people -- much like TWA Flight 800, some people are in the nose section and they're protected from wind blast as they're falling down. The people in the back of the airplane where it cracked, they're subjected to wind blast. So you might have a fix of recovered bodies, some are clothed and some are not clothed. And that will point to an inflight breakup. And that will also be vitally important to see just how vast the debris field is for the wreckage. So all these things you have to piece together to see what was causal in the aircraft accident.

BERMAN: Right now, the biggest obstacle of course is the weather. Lieutenant Colonel Ken Christiansen, David Soucie, thanks so much for being with us. Stick around. Because later in the show we're going to have you answers some questions from our viewers. Ahead for us @THISHOUR, Jeb Bush with new year's political drama,

announcing overnight he has cut corporate ties. So could an official announcement for 2016 be next?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: so most people rang in the new year at a party or alone in their pajamas. Not judging. Jeb Bush did it by taking a fascinating new step toward the 2016 presidential race. It really does look like he is in or awfully close to it. Why? Well, he just stepped down from several of the corporate and non-profit board memberships that he was on, including Rayonier, Tenet Healthcare Corporation, Barclays, also some academic partnerships, Empower Software Solutions, and CorMatrix Cardiovascular Incorporated. If you leave CorMatrix Cardiovascular Incorporated, it must definitely mean you're running for president.

Let's bring in our national correspondent, Suzanne Malveaux. And, Suzanne, you don't quit your jobs that have been paying you a lot of money unless you're awfully serious about something like, say, running for president.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's a good bet there. I mean, he is getting awfully close here. He might have done it, John, in his pajamas. You never know, making this announcement last night, certainly sounds like a new year's resolution. But it was just one of the things that's necessary to do, right, to get rid of your business interests so there's not conflict of interest if you become a public official.

And also his spokesperson saying that he's devoting the time that's necessary to explore this return to politics, potential return to politics. But, John, he's also done some things that has raised some eyebrows. He's lost nearly 20 pounds. That's not an easy thing to do. He has formed a PAC, he's released 250,000 e-mails as governor, and he is also writing an eBook. So he's very busy.

It was a couple weeks ago that I covered this story and we were talking about it because you have a 61-year-old former two-term Florida governor who posts on Facebook. He says, "I have decided to actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States." So you can imagine with all of the speculation about him as well as Hillary Clinton, that this is going to be potentially a showdown, the possibility of this second Bush-Clinton showdown has got the political world here just spinning.

BERMAN: And of course this has been an interesting development, also. The whole political world was spinning for a few weeks before he announced he was actively considering running, and then once he did, we sure talked a lot about it. So inevitably it pumped up his poll numbers; now leading the Republican field according to the latest CNN/ORC poll. You can see him right there with 23 percent; it's the first lead in our polling outside the statistical margin of error. But it doesn't necessarily mean he's going to hold on to it, does it, Suzanne? MALVEAUX: Not necessarily. So there are a couple things working for

and against him. He's very popular with the party establishment, he brings in big donors, he speaks fluent Spanish. Governor of the state that is needed to capture the presidency, of course, Florida.

But he does face a lot of criticism from his own party. So we're talking specifically from conservatives; they see him as too moderate on immigration reform, on education, and there is something that's interesting that's happening this month, is that Bush has declined an invitation to speak at a political event at the end of the month. This is by the Iowa Freedom Summit and is organized by big-time conservative representative Stephen King, who has been on our air many times, who is also one of the most vocal critics of immigration reform.

So you're going to have half a dozen potential contenders who will be there at the summit. So it reflects how important this is, Iowa as well as the home of the first presidential caucus, but Bush will not be there. He says it's a conflict with his schedule. But it obviously sets him apart from the rest of the pack.

BERMAN: It's always very interesting when you see a politician not going to Iowa when they're considering running for president. Suzanne Malveaux, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

MALVEAUX: Happy new year.

BERMAN: You too.

Some other headlines for us this morning. In Shanghai, what started off as a huge celebration with bright lights and music, it turned into a deadly evening. A stampede at a waterfront celebration crushed dozens of people, killing 36. Authorities are still investigating the cause behind this. One witness told Chinese media it started with people chasing after coupons dropped from a building. Apparently they thought they may have been dollar bills.

The wife of a Georgia police chief is in critical condition with a gunshot wound this morning. The police chief has been placed on administrative leave. William McCollum was just named Peachtree City's police chief in October. The town is a suburb of Atlanta. Police have not said how McCollum's wife was shot. The investigation has been turned into the state's bureau of investigation.

Possible security breach is being investigated at Chick-Fil-A. The fast food chain says it is working with law enforcement to look into reports of unusual activity involving card payments used at a few of their restaurants. The chain did not specify which restaurants or locations. But it says customers will not be liable for any fraudulent charges and they will be able to provided free identity protection services if a breach is confirmed.

A woman went into labor on a Delta Airlines flight from San Francisco to Minneapolis. They diverted the flight, landed in Salt Lake City, and rushed her to the hospital before the baby was born. A pediatrician on board and the local fire department pitched in to help. Both the mother and baby are doing fine. Double frequent flyer miles, by the way.

Ahead for us, @THISHOUR, we're going to go to the crisis center in Surabaya in Indonesia for new developments in the search for victims and debris from Flight 8501. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)